C de la Torre - Disequilibrium

Offering up a solution of thinking “outside of the box” isn’t exactly thinking outside of the box. We should challenge popular common sense – entertaining all possible avenues of thought outside and inside of the box. If we are so inclined to find the solutions outside of the establishment, we are likely to ignore the establishment altogether. Engaging the establishment brings into view fragments of logic which may be useful to discovery.

Within the context of a commodity-centric culture, writing often blindly validates institutionalized structures outside the realm of objectivity. However, in order to extend the limits of form and meaning, the writer should not completely disregard those structures. According to Covino, writing that “Edward Said has called ‘preservative’ rather than ‘investigative’” is a result of “the failure of objectivity” which partially comprises “the epistemological crisis of this century” (311). However, “Derrida believes that resisting enclosure by institutionalized structures requires intellectual play by writers who recognize the limitations of their discourse clearly enough to push against them,” and that “all play begins with ‘the means at hand’ and entails to some extent ‘the necessity of borrowing one’s concepts from the text of a heritage’” (Covino, 312). In order to expand current limitation, we must first engage it.

The popular opinions produced by our commodity-centric culture work to preserve the order of that culture, but are those opinions based in reality? Nelson argues that “cultural studies has traditionally been deeply concerned with how all cultural production is sustained and determined by (and in turn influences) the broad terrain of popular common sense” (323). Because this common sense is influenced by commodity-based reasoning, critical analysis of mass cultural products is emphasized. In America “cultural studies theory and practice are in danger of being severed from one another” (Nelson 323). Because popular opinion is forged by what is depicted on movie screens and in popular song lyrics, this separation can be attributed to the influence of mass culture in that the “practice” of cultural studies is never fully realized. Furthermore, I challenge Nelson’s recognition of a “broad terrain of popular common sense” by asserting that popular common sense may in fact occupy the most limited of terrain. Wrapping and constricting itself amidst the wire and thorn of the present, it gives little attention to the finer elements of history as a means of intertexualization, therefore not showing any concern of how it may or may not dramatically shape present and future ideologies. Our increasing inability to separate fantasy from reality (resulting from the influence of Modernism and Post-Modernism) is derivative of a narcissistic culture obsessed with appearances and mired in perception. Popular opinion, fickle as it may be, dominates the shallow end of imagination. Its diversity is limited by the arbitrations of a collective social mind, whose only purpose is to reproduce the climate in which it comfortably “consumes.” I argue that popular opinion is the bottleneck of society, but not in such a way to be devoid of all merit. It is this narrow set of ideals which allows truly distinct and revolutionary concepts to occupy a controversial space where they may ultimately influence change.

Along with understanding history’s influence on our ideologies, we must be willing to extrapolate how our present affects our future in terms of the past. We must learn from history, careful not to employ its strategies for the purpose of understanding current phenomenon through an unwavering lens, but rather to break free from the notion of culture and society in the present as being the extent of utopian potential. If “our interpretations [and] theories are produced for the world in which we live” (Nelson 327) but we never depart from our present mode of thought or “reality,” we are doomed to recycle those theories until they become virtual representations of themselves. Because perception is paramount within this context, pure motive and the pursuit of knowledge are lowered to a subordinate level, thus promoting social stagnation. Because its “practices…are always to be rethought, rearticulated to contemporary conditions,” cultural studies prevents this stagnation by “continuing political renewal and struggle” (Nelson 327). According to Covino, “puzzlement and disequilibrium are the elements of rhetoric” (318). As described in Baudrillard’s The Spirit of Terrorism , there can be no established order without a contradictory yet equal movement of disorder (disorder referring to the mainstay of ideas that threatens to debase its relative logic, one that is based solely on the perpetuation of current popular interests).

Although critical evaluation of popular common sense is necessary to avoid social stagnation, we should not simply be content to think “outside of the box” for new ideas. We should instead be aware of how popular common sense influences (and is influenced by) current ideologies if we are to objectively continue the process of invention.

WORKS CITED

Covino, William A. “Rhetoric Is Back: Derrida, Feyerabend, Geertz, and the Lessons of History.” Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Eds. William A. Covino and David A. Jolliffe. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1995. 311-318.

Nelson, Cary. “Always Already Cultural Studies: Two Conferences and a Manifesto.” Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Eds. William A. Covino and David A. Jolliffe. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1995. 323-327.

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